by its darker color and coarser muscle
fibers.
Most graded supermarket beef today is
graded “Choice,” with 4–10% fat, or
“Select,” with 2–4% fat. Prime beef is now
around 10–13% fat. Ground beef, which
may be all lean meat or a mixture of lean
and fat, ranges from 5 to 30% fat content.
European Beef Other beef-loving countries
raise their cattle differently and have
produced distinctive beefs. Italy prefers young
meat from animals slaughtered at 16–18
months. Until the advent of BSE, much
French and British beef came from dairy stock
several years old. According to a standard
French handbook, Technologie Culinaire
(1995), the meat of an animal less than two
years old is “completely insipid,” while meat
“at the summit of quality” comes from a steer
three to four years old. But because the risk of
an animal having BSE rises as it grows older,
a number of countries now require that meat
barry
(Barry)
#1